Joseph Young's Puzzleria!: April 2017

Friday, April 28, 2017

Short-handed goal: Shorter shorts! “Come on home to your adobe” Ezra Pound of “Litera-cure” MonsterMASHUPsideDown;

P! SLICES: OVER (65 +432) SERVED

Welcome to our April 28^th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

We are serving up a few fewer puzzles this week, so you can concentrate on submitting entries to Will Shortz’s two-week NPR creative challenge.

We offer a five-part Ripping-Off-Shortz-Slice of that April 23^rd challenge, and will be serving up ten additional rip-offs next Friday, May 5^th.^.

Also on this week’s menus:

1. A short but sporty Hors d’Oeuvre;

2. A home-grown tercet, as an Appetizer; and

3. An “ailimentary” Dessert.

Please enjoy!

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Coming Up Short Hors d’Oeuvre:

Short-handed goal: Shorter shorts!

Because a certain professional team has a “longish” nickname, it is sometimes known as, or is called by, only a shorthand version of its full nickname.

Shorten that shorthand version even further by removing one letter. The result, if you interpret the first part of it correctly, reveals the shorthand version of the full nickname of a second professional team in a different sport.

What are these two teams?

Hint: About 16 months after the second team won a national championship in its sport, the first team won a national championship in its sport.

Appetizer Menu

Anapestic Hacienda Appetizer:

“Come on home to your adobe...”

Cut a B from a word for a home,

The result is a word for a poem.

Name these words, which rhyme also. Shalom!

MENU

Ripping Off Shortz’s Creative Open-Ended Slice:

MonsterMash UpsideDown

Will Shortz’s April 23^rd NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle reads:

It’s a two-week creative challenge. … The object is to mashup the titles of past No. 1 hits on the Billboard 100 pop chart to tell a story. For example:“I Shot the Sheriff” “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.” “The Morning After” “I’ll Be There” Leaving On A Jet Plane.”

Wikipedia has a list of the Billboard 100 No. 1 singles from the Hot 100 era, 1958 to present, which you can use. Your story can include up to seven song titles. …

Puzzleria’s Riffing/Ripping Off Shortz Slice reads:

Each of the five listings of Billboard 100 No. 1 singles, below, represents a very short and tenuous “story,” or a more-or-less (or, to be frank, a less-than-more) coherent phrase.

Can you decipher them?

1. “Family Affair” “Look Away” “Look Away”! “Hold On” “Hold On” “Hold On”!... “Shake You Down”, “Again” “She Loves You” “It’s My Party”, “Show And Tell” “Arthur’s Theme” “Missing You” “Like A Prayer”… “One Week”!

2. “When I Need You” “Stranger On The Shore” “Heart Of Glass” “Abracadabra” Crack A Bottle”, “One Dance”? “No One” “We Are Young”!

3. “Take On Me”“Missing You” “Seasons In The Sun” “Arthur’s Theme” “Africa” “Like A Virgin” “With A Little Luck”: “ “Hold On” “I’m Sorry” “Amanda” “She Loves You” “My All”“My All”!”

4. “Always” “Heart Of Gold”, “Amazed” “Duke Of Earl” “Lost In Emotion” “Arthur’s Theme” “Black And Yellow” “Arthur’s Theme” “Alone” “Blaze Of Glory”. “Informer” “Show And Tell”, “No One” “Black Or White” “The Happy Organ”. “American Woman”, “Sherry” “__” “__” “Telstar”!

5. “Boogie Oogie Oogie” “Moody River”. “Sukiyaki”.? “No One” “Say It Right”! “Black Or White”, “The Happy Organ”.

Dessert Menu

Ounce Of Prevention Dessert

Ezra Pound of “Litera-cure”

Delete the first half of a last name from a title character from a famous work of literature, leaving a word for an ailment. Delete the middle letter from a last name from a second title character from the same work of literature, leaving what someone suffering from the ailment might swallow to get relief.

What are these two last names? What are the ailment and what might the sufferer swallow?

Hint: Insert the middle letter you removed from the second title character’s surname into the exact middle of the deleted half of the first character’s surname name to form a word that appears 35 times in the author's oeuvre, but not once in the work of literature alluded to above.

Every Friday at Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! we publish a new menu of fresh word puzzles, number puzzles, logic puzzles, puzzles of all varieties and flavors. We cater to cravers of scrumptious puzzles!

Our master chef, Grecian gourmet puzzle-creator Lego Lambda, blends and bakes up mysterious (and sometimes questionable) toppings and spices (such as alphabet soup, Mobius bacon strips, diced snake eyes, cubed radishes, “hominym” grits, anagraham crackers, rhyme thyme and sage sprinklings.)

Please post your comments below. Feel free also to post clever and subtle hints that do not give the puzzle answers away. Please wait until after 3 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesdays to post your answers and explain your hints about the puzzles. We serve up at least one fresh puzzle every Friday.

We invite you to make it a habit to “Meet at Joe’s!” If you enjoy our weekly puzzle party, please tell your friends about Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! Thank you.

Friday, April 21, 2017

Amazin’ Mets... a duo of divas! Recreation promotes circulation; Hey, Daddio, hold the mayo on my dogg! May I use my soup spoon for the caviar? Apocalypse presently… M’aider! M’aider!

P! SLICES: OVER (65 +432) SERVED

Welcome to our April 21^st edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

We are serving up ten puzzles this week, six of which are Rip/Riff-offs of Will Shortz’s spooneristic NPR puzzle.

Also on our menus are:

* A cool Hors d’Oeuvre, Daddio,

* An operatic Appetizer,

*An inkstained wretched Slice, and

* An apocalyptic Dessert.

So, grab a spoon and shovel these morsels into your mental maw. Think of it as brain food.

Enjoy it, please..

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Cool Hepcats On Cable Hors d’Oeuvre:

Hey, Daddio, hold the mayo on my dogg!

Each answer to the seven clues below contains the same number of letters:

1. Beatles bassist

2. Cool is to “hepcat and daddio” as ___ is to “homie and dogg”

3. A nearly seven-decades-old TV network

4. An international airport in the United States ... hold the Mayo

5. An international airline

6. A nearly two-decades-old cable TV network

7. Axes

Solve for the seven clues.

Appetizer Menu

Double-Diva Appetizer:

Amazin’ Mets… a duo of divas!

The audience at the Metropolitan Opera clamored for the contralto diva Marian Anderson – the first African American performer to perform at the Met (in 1955) – to sing a bonus aria. She indulged them.

About a half-decade later, a similar Met audience clamored for Anderson’s protégé, Leontine Price, to do the same. So, Leontine did the same as her precursor, Marian.

The entertainment section of the New York Times the following day bore a headline (consisting of two 7-letter words) chronicling Leontine’s bonus aria performance. (Note: This is all speculation or, to be honest, fake news. I have no clue, for example, what the Times headlines were on that following day.)

The 14 letters in those two words can be rearranged to form the first and last names of a journalist who is also a television personality.

Who is this TV journalist? What is the two-word headline?

MENU

New Sprinter Slice:

Recreation promotes circulation

Name a major U.S. newspaper (with a circulation in six figures) in two words. After changing one letter to an “i”, Remove the space and a ubiquitous two-letter word. The result is a piece of recreational equipment.

What is it, and what is the newspaper?

Ripping Off Shortz Slices:

May I use my soup spoon for the caviar?

Will Shortz’s April 16^th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle reads:

A spoonerism is when you change the initial consonant sounds of two words in a phrase to get a new phrase. For example, “Tames Jailer” is a spoonerism of the singer James Taylor. “Spark Mitts” is a spoonerism of the swimmer Mark Spitz. The name of what famous entertainer – first and last names – has a two-word spoonerism meaning “A runny variety of cheese”?

Puzzleria’s Riffing/Ripping Off Shortz Slices read:

ONE:

A.) Spoonerize a basic American dessert (whose ingredients include eggs, sugar and flour) to form a two-syllable synonym of the one-syllable tool used to slice it, and what you must do to the dessert after mixing its ingredients.

What are the synonym of the tool and the word for what you must do to the dessert ingredients?

B.) Spoonerize a meatless British dish (that appears in lyrics penned by a former Beatle) to form two words: one associated with golf and another that sounds like a word associated with tournaments.

What are the word associated with golf and the word associated with tournaments?

TWO:

Spoonerize just the first and third words of a possible three-word first course during a three-course meal to form a three-word description of what a Scottish musical group (that is named after a sweet fruity jelly) might do at a concert.

What is the possible first course? What might the group do at a concert.

Hint: What the “musical group might do at a concert” involves the B-side of a single. The A-side was a hit.

The group had a UK Singles Chart topper with a Beatles cover from the White Album.

THREE:

Spoonerize the name of a meatless, eggless and cheese-less two-word appetizer to form a word meaning “a really nice person” (at least according to the Urban Dictionary) and a homophone of a word meaning “well-grounded” (at least according to Merriam Webster’s Dictionary).

FOUR:

Spoonerize a two-word appetizer to form what sounds like a two-word caption for the image of the two girls with a magnifying glass pictured at the right

FIVE:

Spoonerize the name of a two-word entree (prepared in an oven) to form two words that sound like what each of the following proper nouns will be on one day during the last third of 2017:

Forty-Niner, Cowboy, Jaguar, Giant, Viking, Cardinal, Seahawk, Titan.

What is the entrée? What will each proper noun be one day in 2017?

SIX:

Find rhymes for the first and last names of a well-known quarterback to form a two-word “variety of crumbly cheese”?

Replacing the quarterback’s last name with a homophone and keeping his first name intact will describe what Antoine Vollon often did, as evidenced by the image of the still life artwork pictured at the right.

Who is the quarterback?

What is the crumbly cheese, and what did Antoine Vollon do?

Dessert Menu

Prepositioning Adverbs Dessert

Apocalypse presently… M’aider! M’aider!

Don’t obsess on the end times incessantly…

There shall be an Apocalypse presently.

Name an adverb that conveys the sense that a given event will occur sooner or later, but will surely occur. For example, a holy person might proclaim, “We don't know the exact day, but the Apocalypse will take place, _______.”

Replace the second letter of this adverb with the letter two places past it (that is, two places further on) in the alphabet, and also remove from the adverb two consecutive letters that spell out a common preposition. The result is an adjective that might describe an event that happens sooner rather than later. For example, a holy person, now a dweller in the post-apocalyptic messianic kingdom, might proclaim, “We all knew the Apocalypse would take place _______, but its occurrence on May 1, 2017 seemed just so ______!”

What are this adverb and adjective?

We invite you to make it a habit to “Meet at Joe’s!” If you enjoy our weekly puzzle party, please tell your friends about Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! Thank you.

Friday, April 14, 2017

Creature from the brackish lagoon; What word “Will” fill in the blank? The answer is not “re-sign”this time; Parsley, not-so-sage, Rosemary Woods, and thyme to go? Ingestion or indigestion?

P! SLICES: OVER (65 +432) SERVED

Welcome to our April 14^th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! Hope you’re having a Good Friday.

We are serving up ten challenges this week, six which are Riff-Offs/Rip-offs of the NPR puzzle from April 9 on the National Public Radio Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle segment hosted by Will Shortz (see photo, above left).

This past Sunday’s challenge was composed by Joseph Young of St. Cloud, Minnesota. That means, of course, that I get to riff/rip myself off on this week’s Puzzleria!

Also on our menus are:

A newsy Hors d’Oeuvre, a newsy Appetizer, and a Dessert that may or may not be lip-smacking.

And, there is another puzzle slice immediately beneath our main MENU. Will Shortz himself has a bearing on its answer(s).

Please enjoy.

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Hyphens In The News Hors d’Oeuvre:

The answer is not “re-sign”this time

A euphemistic hyphenated word has been in the news this past week. Rearrange the letters in that word to form a two-word description of any one of the following videos:

What is the two-word description, and what is the hyphenated word in the news?

Appetizer Menu

News Biz Appetizer:

Parsley, not-so-sage, Rosemary Woods, and thyme to go?

Name a person lately in the news whose job it is to interact with others in the news business. Write the person’s first name twice and last name once. Rearrange those 14 letters to form a possible editorial headline – containing, in order, 1, 7 and 6 letters – that those “others in the news business” might write if the person resigns (not re-signs) or is fired, whichever comes first.

Who is this person? What is the possible headline?

MENU

Shortz Circuited Slice:

What word “Will” fill in the blank?

Fill in the blank in this sequence with a word that belongs:

a, I, us, go, if, coy, zone, killjoy, _______, super-razzmatazz

Explain your selection.

Note: There are more words than just one word that can properly belong in the blank. Among the possible answers are:

A word that cannot be found in dictionaries but that can be found on the National Public Radio website and airwaves, and is familiar to fans of Will Shortz.

Another word that works as a correct answer (and is found in dictionaries) is a verb for something Will Shortz does.

Ripping Off Shortz And Young Slices:

Creature from the brackish lagoon

Will Shortz’s April 9^nd NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, composed by Joseph Young, reads:

Name a well-known U.S. city in two words. Replace each of these words with a word that rhymes with it and you’ll name a large sea creature in two words. What is it?

Puzzleria’s Riffing/Ripping Off Shortz And Young Slices read:

ONE:

Name a somewhat well-known eastern U.S. city in two words. Replace each of these words with a word that rhymes with it and the result will be how you would describe anything belonging to the late great Richard Lane.

What is this city?

TWO:

Name a somewhat well-known Canadian city in two words. Replace each of these words with a word that rhymes with it and you’ll name a two-word adverb (sometimes written as one word) meaning “afoot” or “in progress.”

What is this city?

THREE:

Name a somewhat well-known eastern U.S. city in two words. Replace each of these words with a word that rhymes with it and you’ll name something a farmer does and the type of farmer he/she is because he/she does it.

What is this city? What is it the farmer does?

Note: the city’s name contains some punctuation, and the pronunciation of its second word is somewhat disputed. The pronunciation I used in the puzzle is reportedly how the local residents pronounce it.

FOUR:

Name a somewhat well-known western U.S. city that is a two-syllable compound word. Replace each of these words with a word that rhymes with it and you’ll name something a performer delivers from the stage, and the hoped-for reaction from the audience.

What is this city? What is delivered and what is the reaction?

FIVE:

Name a not-so-well-known northeastern U.S. city that is a three-syllable word. If you replace the first syllable with a word that rhymes with it and replace the second and third syllables with a two-syllable word that rhymes with it, you’ll name a two-word description of Luna 2, Surveyor 3 or Apollo 11.

What is this city? What is the two-word description?

SIX:

Name a somewhat well-known western U.S. city in two words and three total syllables. Replace each of these syllables with a syllable that rhymes with it and you’ll name a three-word description of what you would have seen at a 1960’s Beatles concert with Ruth Brandin, Ina Martell and the Pop Dollies as the opening acts.

What is this city? What is the three-word description?

Dessert Menu

Too Tough To Swallow Dessert

Ingestion or indigestion?

Name something very seldom ingested (except perhaps by accident) that is often removed from an item of food. So, remove it. But don't throw it away. Instead, stuff three consecutive letters inside of it, and then tack one letter onto its end.

The result something usually ingested that often replaces the thing that is very seldom ingested.

What is this item of food? What are the seldom ingested thing and often ingested thing found within the food item?

We invite you to make it a habit to “Meet at Joe’s!” If you enjoy our weekly puzzle party, please tell your friends about Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! Thank you.

Friday, April 28, 2017

Short-handed goal: Shorter shorts! “Come on home to your adobe” Ezra Pound of “Litera-cure” MonsterMASHUPsideDown;

Friday, April 21, 2017

Amazin’ Mets... a duo of divas! Recreation promotes circulation; Hey, Daddio, hold the mayo on my dogg! May I use my soup spoon for the caviar? Apocalypse presently… M’aider! M’aider!

Friday, April 14, 2017

Creature from the brackish lagoon; What word “Will” fill in the blank? The answer is not “re-sign”this time; Parsley, not-so-sage, Rosemary Woods, and thyme to go? Ingestion or indigestion?

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